Looking Back

by Sir Seymour John Fortescue

But this peaceful time was rapidly coming to an end. In the spring of 1882 things in Egypt were evidently going from bad to worse, so in May the Fleet was ordered to cruise in the neighbourhood of Alexandria, and off that port the bulk of the Fleet patrolled backwards and forwards for weeks whilst the members of the Government were trying (very slowly, it seemed to us!) to make up their minds as to what steps should be taken. Early in June the Fleet was ordered to enter the port of Alexandria, the heavier ships—Alexandra, Superb, Sultan, Temeraire, Inflexible—anchoring outside, while the inside squadron consisted of ships of lighter draught—the Penelope and Monarch joined up with the Invincible, the temporary flagship of Sir Beauchamp Seymour, who had been there since the middle of May. The smaller craft attached to the Fleet consisted of the Hecla, a torpedo depot vessel, the gun-vessels and gunboats, Condor, Bittern, Beacon, Cygnet, Decoy, and the dispatch vessel Helicon.

It is none of my business to comment on the situation at that time in Egypt, but probably every reasonable man would now agree with Lord Salisbury, who, when exposing the vacillating policy which the Government exhibited for weeks and months, instanced as a direct result that the massacre of Alexandria which took place on June 11th,—(of which I was a spectator and will chronicle more anon),—amounted, amongst other details, to British subjects being “butchered under the very guns of the Fleet, which had never budged an inch to save them.” But, after all, nothing more can be expected of the “great Parliamentarian,”—and I imagine that not even the most bigoted of Tories would grudge the late Mr. Gladstone that measure of compliment. I also suppose that no man but a politician of Mr. Gladstone’s commanding intellect and reputation could inform Parliament, a fortnight after Alexandria had been bombarded and when some 40,000 troops were on their way to Egypt, that the country “was not at war.” But, as I remarked in my Introduction, “I love an Artist,” and surely no greater political artist ever flourished than the man we still hear spoken of with such love and veneration as “Mr. G.”

On Sunday, the 11th of June, the situation apparently remaining fairly quiet, leave was given to officers and chief petty officers, and, cooped up as we had all been when cruising off Alexandria, nearly every one not required for duty took the opportunity of going ashore. I was one of those who landed, and I cannot better describe what I saw of the events of that day than by inserting a copy of a letter which I wrote at the time to my brother, then Viscount Ebrington, M.P. This letter was probably the earliest account received by post, and when shown to Sir Charles Dilke, the then Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, was, by his wish, forwarded to The Times, which duly published it:—

“The Massacre at Alexandria.

“The following private letter has been received from an officer in the Fleet:—

“Off Alexandria, June 16th, 1882.

“My dear ——, . . . We are dwelling in the midst of alarms, with our loins girded, etc., all ready to knock down forts and otherwise protect British interests. That was a deuce of a row last Sunday, and we were all precious lucky to get back to the ship alive. I fancy the row was arranged by Arabi, so that he could have the pleasure of putting it down; but, like every other row, it had to have some raison d’être, and this was easily found in a squabble between some Arabs and Greeks. The Arabs began to break windows, and the Greeks produced firearms, and let fly amongst them. I was in the same street about a couple of hundred yards off, and saw the stones flying and the shooting; but though there were Arabs all about us, they never made an attempt to annoy us in any way. Presently up came some troops, all anyhow, without a single officer, and began to blaze away with great impartiality; but it struck us all that for choice they went for the Europeans. We, being between the bulk of the mob and the troops, and seeing people beginning to drop, thought, on the whole, we were not very happily placed, and having by the blessing of Providence found ourselves near a door, executed a strategic movement to the left, got inside the door, and locked it. The house we got into turned out to be a sort of monastery school, and there we remained for over an hour. Meanwhile, outside the fun was becoming decidedly fast and furious. The soldiers pegged away merrily, and the Arabs looted. We could see them through the shutters carrying off all sorts of trash—toys, chairs, baths (and what could an Arab do with a bath?)—in fact, anything they could lay hands on. Presently, the soldiers having evidently got our part of the town into something like order, we strolled out trying to look as if we were not in a funk, and in fact rather liked it. My friend and I were just getting into a trap to drive down to the landing-place, when an Egyptian policeman, who could speak English, came up and told us it was certain death to drive down where we were going, as the mob were at their worst there, and were hauling the people out of the cabs and cutting their throats. We at once came to the conclusion that we would give up our drive, and went to the nearest consulate, where we waited till the disturbance was over.

“All this was child’s play compared to what happened to another lot. About half an hour before we got to the consulate four of our fellows—a great friend of mine (S.), a little Swede we are educating on board here, one of our doctors and an engineer got into a cab, and proceeded to drive down. All of a sudden they were surrounded by a mob of Arabs, who stopped the horses and went for them with their sticks. Being, of course, completely unarmed, they ran—S. and the Swede on one side, and the doctor and engineer the other. Dear old S., having been rather a professor at football in the days of his youth, being very strong and quick on his pins, and the little Swede also being as hard as nails, they managed to get through the brutes, with no injury except a good hammering all over. Of the others, one was stabbed and beaten to death, and the other, who is still in bed, after being beaten most frightfully, managed to crawl up to a soldier, who, for a wonder, behaved like a trump, stood over him with a fixed bayonet, and finally shoved him into a house, where he stopped all night, and was fetched on board next day, poor chap, in a most pitiable condition.

“And now comes the most extraordinary thing of all. One of our chief petty officers was ashore on leave. Our poor engineer was picked up by another trap going the other way, and was taken to the police-station. As he was being helped out of the trap, another Arab came up, banged him over the head and knocked him down. The petty officer went for the beast with a common thorn walking-stick he had in his hand, jammed it into his mouth with such force that it came out behind the ear, and killed him dead. There certainly is a Providence watching over sailors, because this fellow was hardly touched. When he came on board and said that he had killed his Arab, as before described, nobody believed him. However, it turned out to be absolutely true.

“The telegrams will have told you more than we know about the numbers killed, but there is no doubt that they finished off at least sixty Europeans, and Heaven only knows how many Arabs.”

Nowadays there are few Englishmen who have not served in the Army or Navy in some capacity, so they will be able to appreciate how the month dragged its weary way along from the 11th of June to the 11th of July, when at last we were permitted to “get a little of our own back” by bombarding the forts. Meanwhile we had fretted and raged at the idea, of Englishmen, many of whom were officers in the Navy, being treated like dogs by a lot of half-naked Arabs, and that we, though on the spot and serving in a powerful Fleet, were not allowed to retaliate. I have never witnessed such discontent as existed, and certainly on board my own ship the cases of men refusing to obey orders became commoner every day; but while the officers and men of the Service suffered, they could expect no sympathy from the gentlemen of the House of Commons for anything so ordinary as the ill-treatment of British subjects. Among the members of that House of Parliament there are always men who have no enemies in the world except their own countrymen, and the rest of them are engaged in that most amusing and engrossing sport known as “Politics.” Anything outside the region of political exigencies matters nothing to them. I have the opinion of one of the ablest of them that ever lived in support of this theory. Years ago I was travelling back from a race meeting with Lord Randolph Churchill, and I well remember his conversation. He told me he had tried most things in the shape of excitement. He admitted that big game shooting was excellent fun, that engineering a successful coup on the Turf (and he and his racing partner, Lord Dunraven, had lately pulled off a remarkably successful coup when that good mare l’Abbesse de Jouarre won a great handicap) was enthralling; but he went on to say that nothing in the world was half so engrossing, as were the almost daily intrigues and manœuvres that formed the meat and drink of the politician. But this is a digression, and I must return to Alexandria.

During the ensuing month Alexandria was being rapidly deserted, and an enormous number of refugees of all nations were being deported as rapidly as possible to their homes. Commander Lord Charles Beresford was placed in charge, and the work of chartering ships for the embarkation of passengers was no light one. So far as the Superb was concerned, our first duty, after the massacre, was to embark a number of corpses, one being that of our own engineer officer. Many others were those of men in the Fleet. We had to take them out to sea, and, in the words of our Burial Service, commit them to the deep. Bluejackets have not the smallest objection to seeing their comrades buried at sea when there are obvious reasons for so doing, but they bitterly resented being sent to sea to bury their dead when there was a Christian churchyard ashore, and this was another cause of much of the discontent of which I have spoken. Mercifully, things in England were improving. Public indignation forced the Government reluctantly to take action, and the Admiral was allowed to send an ultimatum, which I believe was principally to the effect that if the work of strengthening the coast fortifications still proceeded the Fleet would bombard and destroy the forts. Arabi replied by bringing more troops to Alexandria and continued to labour on the coast defences, so at last, on July 10th, all merchant ships and foreign men-of-war were ordered out of the harbour, and at 6 a.m., July 11th, the bombardment began.

I am not proposing to write any sort of description of the bombardment as a whole, but am simply relating what came under my personal observation as a lieutenant commanding a battery on board the Superb. The Superb mounted twelve 18-ton muzzle-loading 10-inch guns in her main battery. My old comrade, the above-mentioned Lieutenant Charles Graves Sawle, commanded the six guns that were mounted on one side, and I commanded the other six. There were then no hydraulic lifts or mechanical appliances of any sort, so what really happened in action was that the side that was unengaged hoisted the shell up by hand from the bowels of the ship, and the engaged battery fired them off. My own battery was terribly under-officered when my side was in action. To assist me to control the firing of six 400-pounders (to revert to the old-fashioned measurement) I had only one subaltern of marines and one midshipman. It may be imagined how difficult it was to give orders and exercise control with something like a hundred men rushing projectiles up from the shell-room on one side, while the guns on my engaged side were in action with all the accompanying noise of firing and the clanking of chains and winches for the process of training and loading the guns. After some rather wild shooting at the commencement, when the men, owing to their keenness, were difficult to restrain, we settled down steadily to work, and at last we were able to appreciate by actual practice how scandalous was the sighting of our guns; how poor their shooting capacity, and how faulty their projectiles. Ten years before Alexandria, the French Navy possessed a breech-loading heavy gun, working on the same principle as does our gun of to-day; but owing, I believe, to the wiseacres at Woolwich at the time of which I write, our guns were provided for us by soldiers, and the Navy was condemned to go on with these ridiculous muzzle-loaders.

The first part of the bombardment was carried out by the outside squadron under weigh, but we soon found that, when moving, it was impossible to make, with our weapons, any sort of accurate shooting, so the squadron was anchored. Luckily for us, the Egyptian guns were practically just as faulty as our own, their ammunition was a great deal worse, and their shooting beneath contempt, so the damage done to the fleet was very slight, and the casualties were trifling. After a long day’s firing the Egyptians were driven away from their guns, and a considerable amount of damage was done to the forts. One lucky shot from the Superb’s battery set fire to the magazine of Fort Adah, which we were then engaging, and blew it up, and that brought the day to a conclusion as far as my ship was concerned.

Although the Egyptians had been driven from their guns, their powers for mischief had by no means come to an end, and the very next day the town of Alexandria was set on fire and looted. The Khedive being in considerable danger in his palace at Ramleh, he was safely moved to another palace at Ras el Tin, situated on the peninsula of that name, which had been occupied by a landing-party of bluejackets and marines, and a few days afterwards I was landed in command of a company of bluejackets to form part of the garrison of Ras el Tin, our duty being to ensure the safety of the Khedive. Like all sailors, we were delighted to get out of the ship, but I do not know that we were much better off than our brother officers who were left on board. It sounded very Oriental and romantic to be quartered in a harem, but as the harem was very stuffy and dirty, and only inhabited by swarms of flies, it did not quite come up to my ideas of Eastern luxury.

But events were beginning to move—the fires in Alexandria were gradually got under, and order had been restored to the town by the unceasing exertions of Lord Charles Beresford. He began his work ashore with only 140 men under him, bluejackets and marines, who, to use his own words, “had to patrol the town, stop the looting, stop the fresh burning of houses, bury the corpses, and protect the lives of those who had come on shore.” His force was subsequently increased by 600 marines, and they were assisted by a mixed force of Americans, Germans, Greeks, and Italians. Moreover, for cleaning-up purposes, he succeeded in hiring Arab labour. By the 21st all the fires were out and the city was beginning to reassume its normal shape, and on the 1st August he was able to turn over his post as Provost-Marshal and Chief-of-Police at Alexandria to the Military Authorities and return to his ship.